Messed!Up
Let’s get the facts straight from the start. A band on a never-ending hiatus turned viral for a 25-year-old hit single at TikTok in 2023 causing a riot among new and very young fans leading to more than 600 million streams on Spotify and enough money to get the band back together for writing and recording a new album 20 years after their latest effort. That’s just too good to be true, right? Well, that’s what happened with the British band bôa.
Originally released in 1998 and featured as the soundtrack to cult-classic Japanese anime series Serial Experiments Lain, the track “Duvet” became a viral hit on social media towards the end of 2021 – sparking enormous and ongoing interest in the group amongst a whole new generation which has led to millions of streams across their entire catalogue.
I need to remind you, especially all young kids out there, that when I was at my first bôa gig in Manchester in 1999 “Duvet” was fairly new but not the major hit it is today, nor did the band play any bigger venue either. That’s what makes the story so much better; the power of social media can bring bands to the scene late in life – yes, the band members are not young anymore, they’re my age – and get them the attention they didn’t get in their youth. I find it admirable (and hope for my own career to pick up speed – TikTok, any help?).
The thing is that I became painfully aware of the fact that 90% of their fans are new and most of them are around 16 to 18 years old. I was at a Mogwai gig recently, a band that started at the same time as bôa, and their audience is in their early to mid-fifties, but here I was at Knust as one of five or six older gents (+ some stray parents who had to bring their kids), surrounded by 16-year-olds and felt so out of place I was about to leave before it started. Anyway, I didn’t because I haven’t seen bôa live since 2002.
Their 2024 album Whiplash is their best album if you ask me, and obviously, most of the songs on the setlist are album songs but without forgetting about their past hits. I’m quite sure that’s one of the reasons people are here, to listen to some older stuff.
I could tell how supportive the fanbase was as soon as it got closer to gig time. Knust was absolutely packed – they could easily have filled a bigger venue – with young people talking in hushed excitement, and every inch of the venue was brimming with a happy kind of suspense as the gig started off with “Deeply”, a rock song from Bôa’s debut album The Race Of A Thousand Camels (or Twilight as it was called when it was reissued), and the best song of the album, not “Duvet”. Jasmine Rodgers’ vocals invited the crowd in as she sang “Darling, I gotta talk to you” and her lyrics encouraged us to reflect on moments of nostalgia, love, and melancholy. Brilliant album title song “Whiplash “ follows and get the masses moving a bit. It seems like their new and young fans know the new songs really well, and when Jasmine tells people to take over the singing because she has a cold, there’s a whole choir filling the void.
The transition from familiar tracks of previous albums to their new songs was seamless, with each piece staying true to bôa’s unique sound. The new tracks have a certain edge – experience made its impact on the songwriting I guess – while still keeping the musical elements that make bôa great. The emotions explored during the set had what I can only describe as a cathartic effect, and a young fan next to me started to cry during one of the songs. For myself, as someone who has been a bôa listener for a pretty long time, hearing some of my favorite songs live again for the first time in 23 years was a weird feeling. What happened with life? The thing is that bôa sounds even better in person compared to when they are recorded, and Jasmine Rodger’s vocals are insane.
Of course, the night ends with their super hits. The encore holds no surprises; “Twilight” is followed by “Walk With Me”, and then there’s the megahit, “Duvet”, which makes it cathartic.
Luckily, bôa and I will cross ways later this year when they play in Bristol in June. Time to book that ticket now.
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Photographer: Niko Schmuck
